2015/01/30

Let us stop for a moment to reflect that a former Vice Presidential candidate (...) and a distinguished military hero have cheekily joked at the idea of killing Moore. Why? Because the latter had the temerity to question the heroism of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. No Charlie Hebdo cartoons will be tolerated about the icons and ideals they hold dear. It is a shocking backlash given the outcry for freedom of speech of late and makes clear the standard is “your beliefs, not mine” when it comes to critique. According to the Church of Appropriate American Patriotism, the heroic image of Chris Kyle is made sacred.

(...) I think it’s worth stating and understanding that where the rubber meets the road, most people hold others to standards they often fail to meet, it’s human.

I suppose the hypocrites in the Western world are no better than their dearest foreign enemies, and would have taken their place if born in their country.

Concerning Kyle; I don't know much about him, nor will this change since I am thoroughly disinterested. A very high kill count in a rather low intensity war of occupation doesn't smell right in my opinion, though.

2015/01/29

There were plenty voices telling similar things years ago already. The warnings about the idiocy of invading Iraq were loud in early 2002 for everyone who didn't restrict himself to American TV and newspapers. The warnings about the Afghanistan mission becoming pointless and being doomed to fail were plenty and even came from insider officials back in 2005/2006. Belatedly connecting some dots, I figure that some pundits and semi-insiders knew about failures to come in 2001 and 2004 respectively - not out of pure luck, but by observing facts unknown to me at the time.

The warring countries chose to ignore the voices of reason and to follow the pro-wastefulness faction. It was a failure to choose correctly. There is no excuse about these failures being unpredictable or invisible until very late. We had the wrong people in power and the wrong people enact wrong policies, period.

2015/01/25

A government with authoritarian-minded bureaucrats and politicians (or simply with fearful pussy bureaucrats and politicians who are hysterically fearful in a honest way) cannot turn a democratic, free country into a total surveillance and omnipotent police state overnight. This can only be done at the pace permitted by the people.

The agenda towards more snooping, more surveillance, more police powers was kept in check till the early 1990's by the need to be different than the Warsaw pact. Total surveillance, unlimited detention, torture and the like were perceived as 'communist' government actions, and largely unacceptable in the West. Only minorities (black civil rights movement in the USA, for example) and foreigners in foreign countries (CIA torture in Latin America) were exposed to such methods.

This barrier fell with the demise of the Warsaw Pact; soon thereafter, the roots of a surveillance state had their breakthrough. Germany introduced a telephone surveillance law in the mid-90's, for example. Just as it was still publicly exasperated by the revelations about what the STASI did in East Germany.

Huge steps faced huge opposition and were rare without much support, of course. Small steps towards more surveillance, more snooping, more police and intelligence services powers were made instead; the salami slice approach. ideally, no single slice was large enough to mobilize the critical mass of political opposition. The next slice was in order once the people had accustomed to the last one. It was quite the same as with the creeping militarisation of foreign policy in Germany since the mid-90's.

Some slices cannot be kept small, though - the expansion sometimes bumps into taboos, and overcoming those means the slice will be large and visible. That's when hysterias are being provoked and exploited ruthlessly.

Every terror attack - domestic or abroad, "successful" or foiled - draws the pro-authoritarians into the spotlight, and they pretend loudly that breaking freedom-protecting taboos adds security. They even do it when the country hit by a "successful" terror attack actually already had gotten rid of said taboo, proving that this wouldn't protect. Effectiveness doesn't matter, of course: The authoritarians do this as a matter of principle and ideology, not because it would actually work well.

Shortly thereafter, some bill is drafted for taboo-abolishing legislation that makes us less free and the government less restricted, more powerful.

And thus we're getting salami-sliced into a less free society, and pulsed by actually negligible acts of terror into giving up even large chunks of freedom.

This strategy works. It doesn't win every battle, but it's about to win the war because there's no antagonist strategy rolling all the rubbish back. You cannot win by defending only if the attacker doesn't get depleted.

- - - - -

I didn't add links to this text because I had dozens of old Defence and Freedom blog posts in mind while writing it. See for yourself:

It has all the features: Breaking of well-founded taboos, known to be ineffective rubbish, exploiting the post-Hebdo hysteria, attempt to make the legislation low profile (keeping the slice size small).

edit: Blair et all are simply contemptible since they show their contempt for everybody else:

2015/01/23

The discourse on "security policy" lacks a certain clarity of thought and clarity of purpose in my opinion. It's very much possible and even outright likely that resources will be wasted, avoidable hostilities be created, wealth, health, freedom and lives be lost if nations follow a path in "security policy" without such clarity of thought and clarity of purpose.

- - - - -

Humans live in groups because this is mostly the better way to live, and as groups they communicate and deal with other groups through representatives. Much of this is engrained in our genetic heritage apparently, but we have evolved our groups quickly during the last couple thousands of years. Clans were replaced by tribes, and tribes were replaced by states. States have created multi-state groups - even alliances with their own bureaucracy. Our instincts did not match this development because it was too quick. Much of our instincts suits the hunter-gatherer band much better than it does a modern state. Thus we need to think with great clarity and overrule our instincts often in order to achieve better outcomes.

- - - - -

Defence policy is first and foremost about warding off the loss and suffering brought about by war on one's own soil. It extends to warding off as much of the loss and suffering brought about by war in general - even if war was forced onto the state.

Security policy follows a broader definition. It extends as far as influencing the threat and outcomes of war in distant places, in an attempt to garner advantages for oneself. Said "oneself" is never the whole population or citizenry of one's state, but typically a special interest group or conglomerate thereof.

- - - - -

Almost no group has ever been able to defend itself or will ever be able to reign do so without the tolerance by other groups. Even great powers thus seek cooperation with or allegiance of other states, supra-state institutions and even non-government groups.

Some weaker states sense threats to themselves which don't believe to be able to ward off with their own strength. Others believe this to be possible, but still consider cooperation with other states to be more favourable.

These states have good reasons to look at alliances as an institution which enables their defence policy to accomplish its mission, and typically so for much less effort than if defence policy was done in isolation. A state which believes itself to be able to defend itself and still enters an alliance would be led by fools if the resources allocated to defence policy wouldn't be reduced ceteris paribus to match the improved situation.

Weak states' leaders in a strong alliance are exposed to the same temptations as the leaders of strong states: The temptations to use the power at hand for policies which don't provide the public good of security against war's losses and sufferings, but advantages to special interest groups. Said special interest groups could even be foreign groups, such as (supposedly) ideologically aligned groups. It could also be a single ruler himself, driven by a taste for playing games with the game pieces available to him or her.

- - - - -

"Security policy" as well as "defence policy" could also be defined on basis of misconceptions about the outside world. Pre-historic hunter-gatherer groups may have misjudged the intentions of another group they met. Today's politicians, lobbyists, pundits, scholars, flag officers and interested citizens could easily misunderstand a foreign group's motives, capabilities, actions and plans. Ignorance about expenses required or benefits gained by certain policies usually leads to poor judgements as well. More general forms of incompetence aren't rare either.

The result could be wasteful and the actions could self-defeat their purpose - even without any pattern of anti-social motivations on part of the actors.

- - - - -

Changes in the status quo are more impressive than the status quo and affect our judgement out of proportion. Arriving reinforcements influence soldiers' morale in battle much more than their participation right from the beginning of the battle, for example. Such judgement suitable to bands of hunter-gatherers is ill-suited for decision-making on a state or alliance level. We know people react based on pre-historic patterns and should take this into account regarding the how to do, but not in decision-making regarding what to do. A politician serves his people best if he decides on a course of action without undue influences, but recognises that he needs to take into account undue influences on others in order to succeed.

Back to changes in the status quo; a change in the relative economic or military power usually provokes exaggerated reactions, which can easily lead to avoidable losses and suffering. It is most important to preserve, gain or regain clarity of thought and purpose when one faces events which outright provoke a breakthrough of the primitive self.

Avid readers of international news on security policy or history can easily find many instances of hysteria, irrationality, wastefulness, misjudgement unnecessary hostility and incompetence. These are failures of outgrown hunter-gatherer groups to react with clarity of though and clarity of purpose to their outer world. People suffer and die in the process. Anyone who tries to reduce such failures has a noble goal in life.

2015/01/21

"New evidence from other UK intelligence documents revealed by Snowden also shows that a GCHQ information security assessment listed “investigative journalists” as a threat in a hierarchy alongside terrorists or hackers."

A different article on the (in)efficacy of all the "counter-terror" snooping:

Soon after Snowden’s revelations, Alexander said that the N.S.A.’s
surveillance programs have stopped “fifty-four different
terrorist-related activities.” Most of these were “terrorist plots.”
Thirteen involved the United States. Credit for foiling these plots, he
continued, was partly due to the metadata program, intended to “find the
terrorist that walks among us.” (...)

(...) Senator
Patrick Leahy (...) called the fifty-four-plots statistic
“plainly wrong . . . these weren’t all plots, and they weren’t all
thwarted.” He cited a statement by Alexander’s deputy that “there’s only
really one example of a case where, but for the use of Section 215 bulk
phone-records collection, terrorist activity was stopped.” “He’s
right,” [NSA director] Alexander said.

I think he overdid a bit on the helmet. Even slight head movement would be very conspicuous because so much would swirl around.

The narrator also confused concealment (protection against detection, not against shot) with cover (protection against both) at times.

Isn't it a bit uneasy how much the narrator stresses the importance of being speedy on the foot at times? The movements shown when he says so are largely impossible for a modern infantryman weighted down by 15+ kg of armour alone.

2015/01/20

"The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has halted a secret, nearly 15-year program that collected virtually all data on international calls between the United States and certain countries, according to documents and officials familiar with the matter.

Please note; the program began in 1998, long before the 9/11 hysteria when Arab terrorists were little more than the baddies in action C-movies.

The quantity of such revelations supports the thesis that the reason for the mass surveillance is not terrorism or some specific threat; it's a systemic issue. The explanation for this should be searched and I think can be found in more general theories about bureaucracies such as Niskanen's bureaucrat, Principal-Agent model etc. or in psychology. It sure seems to be a global and persistent pattern. I don't think that this or that institution is evil or rotten while others are better: I believe the "better" ones are either better at hiding what they do or they have simply been given less resources and/or freedom of action.

Rules and supervision schemes can be devised to limit excesses and to discourage championing of excesses, but first the public needs to consider the issue worthy of its attention and worthy of outrage, or there won't be robust, lasting improvements.
Sadly, the public and especially so the "published opinion" tend to waste attention on irrelevant or marginally relevant topics and give more serious problems and troublemakers a free pass this way.

2015/01/19

Blog texts tagged "Military Theory" were and are a particular object of pride of mine because very few milbloggers address such topics. There are (surprisingly) simple reasons for why my output in this area didn't keep up the 2009-2012 levels:

(1) Train travels

I travelled much by train for my job in those years, and I preferred two things on long trail travels: Sleeping (uncomfortable!) and thinking about military theory, making notes.

(2) Age

I'm possibly past the age bracket of greatest creativity (yes, there's such a thing)

(3) Common roots

Much of what I wrote was in one way or another linked to a finite set of ideas I already had in 2008-2010. I've probably explored most of the conclusions from that set of ideas.

I'm still confident that I'll be able to easily exceed the quality ambitions of the gazillion of 'military power is sexy' milblogs. I will also push the German spin-off "Verteidigung und Freiheit" soon with a better layout, hopefully with an average of one post per week..

2015/01/12

“There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome’s allies; and if Rome had no allies, then allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest why, then it was the national honor that had been insulted.

The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors, always fighting for a breathing space. The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies, and it was manifestly Rome’s duty to guard against their indubitably aggressive designs. They were enemies who only waited to fall on the Roman people…

Thus there is but one way to an understanding: scrutiny of domestic class interests, the question of who stood to gain.

2015/01/11

I have made an observation on the psychology of people who are strongly pro-civil rights, pro-peace, pro-cultural diversity and the like.

They may put a lot of effort into their favourite topic, but after years of such effort when faced by a similar topic but different taste of it, they may snap and turn with a convertite's fervor around.

The German greens provided anecdotal evidence for this: Their top politicians ranted for a decade against militarised foreign policy, arms exports and so on - only to become the top supporters of the ISAF mission.

Some people who looked like 150% pacifists have recently turned into IS haters wishing for military action against the IS.

A lot of "small government" ideology folks reliably turn into "big budget" folks whenever the topic is the "defense" budget.

Some civil rights movement leaders have had similar moments; still fighting for the interests of their own group against a favourite opposition group, they're often all-too easily lured into trying to oppress a third group.

It looks as if somehow the rational part of the brain got its way on the main topic, but after years the irrational, part finally got its way in a fresh topic. As if some kind of pressure was building up, only to be released by some kind of unexpected provocation.

I lack the researched rive and contacts to look up whether psychological research has discovered, confirmed and labelled this already. It would be interesting to know, but experimental confirmation would be very difficult.

The phenomenon - if existing - would be a major problem in the pursuit of rational, wise policies that face irrational, intuitive competing policy alternatives.

The Indians have finally tested their indigenous LCA fighter-bomber (a Mirage 2000-5 equivalent) on a ski jump ramp on land. I may not keep as much an eye on aerospace developments as in the 90's, but I still think there was much more echo to this kind of test when the Russians and Chinese did it.

Land-based ski jump ramps are really only for testing and training in preparation for a naval use, but in theory they do shorten the take-off runway length for all aircraft with a tricycle landing gear.

I wondered for a long time whether mobile ramps combined with a land catapult wouldn't have been a superior competitor to rocket-assisted take-off (RATO) and certainly a more practical idea than the zero-length launch efforts (an extreme RATO).

Land catapults were tested; the German Luftwaffe had a prototype (FIST Landflugzeugschleuder Kl 12)* troops-tested in early 1941 already. A piston engine of 320 hp towed and accelerated an aircraft of 14,000 kg to 200 kph on 100 m runway length apparently. He 111 bombers were used for at least some of the tests. I always remember this when I read that the Americans are having trouble with their electromagnetic catapult and are spending money like crazy on it.

Add the normal arresting equipment (well-anchored arresting cables and emergency net) and possibly reinforcing plates for the touchdown area and you could turn a 150-200 m segment of road into an airfield, with all airfield-specific items ready for leaving within ten minutes.

It could have been outright fantastic during the 70's in Central Europe, coupled with F-5Es.

2015/01/09

Much had been written about political efforts to turn the U.S.military around for the wars of occupation, away from conventional warfare against high-tech opponents. The effects of such efforts on the R&D and procurement budgets were modest. Germany and other European countries with participation in Afghanistan and (some) even Iraq had similar efforts, and again with little effect on R&D and procurement budgets. The military bureaucracies have a lot of inertia and hardly anybody seriously suggested to ditch all those expensive conventional warfare big ticket programs in favour of what little occupation-specific gear could be developed and purchased. Eventually, the GWOT hysteria offered the budgets to pay for both anyway.

Another politically mandated shift of focus was the much-discussed "Pacific pivot", the intent to re-orient the U.S. armed forces against the PR China. This move was particularly useful to the navy, less so to the air force and the army wasn't happy with it. Again, it didn't take long till journalists and pundits began to point out that much talk, many presentations and papers later, little had changed actually.

Now ISAF ended, and Europeans have begun to pay attention to actual collective defence in Europe again after witnessing the events in the Ukraine. There's actually no need for arms racing or such because the EU has more than enough military power to keep Russia at bay. Mental and planning preparations for Baltic defence scenarios are in short supply, but tanks, fighter jets and the like aren't.

Still, European military bureaucracies welcome the return to their preferred mode, and welcomed the excuse for their current and future big ticket programs.

According to my observation much less Americans paid attention and pondered whether some more conventional land campaign capability would make sense for East European scenarios.

This begs the questions

Will the Americans truly focus on the air-sea arena in the Western Pacific region?

Will the Europeans truly focus on the air-land arena in the Eastern European region?

How long both will have lost the appetite for invasion & occupation?

It's perfectly possible that what looks like long-term trends will prove to be mere gusts of wind without lasting consequences. Examples:

A collapse of Cuba or Venezuela could draw the Americans into Latin America. The French may become busy stabilizing artificial states in West Africa. The Russians could cancel their military reform efforts for want of funds. The Japanese might turn into a military great power and oppose the Chinese almost single-handedly.

Personally, I would prefer a European focus on collective defence, but one with a rational appraisal of the actual balance of forces in Eastern Europe. A focus on collective defence means we can cancel the occupation-related budget positions. It does not mean we need to build up some new mechanized corps.

2015/01/08

.
I had the questionable pleasure to notice the usual suspects crawling out of their hideouts in the wake of the extremism-linked murders in Paris.

One so-called 'terrorism expert' (not linkworthy) claims that we now need to expect everything, and that this so-called terrorism was of an entirely new kind.

He and his ilk are fearmongering. He claims there's an effectively unlimited, new threat - and he is wrong on both accounts. These kinds of crimes have been committed in all of documented history. There's nothing new.
The threat is furthermore negligible and shouldn't even be worth a minute in evening TV news because it's so utterly irrelevant.

Here's how irrelevant the "threat" is:

I looked up the causes of death in France on the OECD website. The statistic for 2011* is this: 679.3 people died of all causes of death per 100,000 population in the year 2011. The causes were

213.1 neoplasms [cancer]
166.4 diseases of the circulatory system [heart]
55.8 symptoms, signs, ill-defined causes
51.4 external causes of mortality [accident, violence]
40.9 diseases of the respiratory system [lung including asthma]
39.9 diseases of the nervous system
29.2 diseases of the digestive system
23.1 mental and behavioural disorders
22.8 endocrine, nutritional and metabolic diseases
14.3 certain infections and parasitic diseases
9.7 diseases of the genitourinary system
4.5 diseases of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue
2.7 diseases of the blood and blood-forming organs
2.2 congenital malformations and chromosomal abnormalities
2.1 certain conditions originating in the perinatal period
1.2 diseases of the skin and subcutaneous system

Well, how much would 12 deaths change this picture?12 deaths among 66.6 million people is about 0.018 per 100,000. That's a rounding error in the smallest subcategory listed above, "assault".

Only complete idiots** would stick to the notion that we should be concerned of terrorists in light of other causes of mortality being more severe by four orders of magnitude!

The terrorism fearmongers are fearful, insecure pussies.** Cowards and loudmouths.** Irrational idiots or antisocials.** They poison** our societies and strive to push us towards wasting attention span and resources on irrelevant and largely imaginary problems.

Finally, such fearmongers are the real terrorists**; THEY terrorise the population. I'm fine with a GWOT once the people recognise these real terrorists. Kick them off the airwaves, off the newspapers and put those fearmongers to the other idiots, where they belong: Right next to electrosmog hysterics, chemtrail hysterics, anti-vaccination activists and others who want to spread fear and misdirect our efforts.

Isn't it fascinating how the recent COIN doctrine fashion with its emphasis on the civilians in the theatre appears to play almost no or no role in the current campaign in over Iraq and Syria?

On the other hand, FM 3-24 is an army publication, and the army plays only a small supporting role in the current campaign. As far as I know the USAF and USN never created real counter-paramilitary field manuals, and the involved fixed wing aviation of the USMC appears to follow USN naval air doctrine in such matters.

We're back to "bomb bomb bomb them", Kosovo-style - except that this time the objective is extremist again, calling for the destruction of the enemy. It is as if military theory and doctrine played no role whatsoever, as if we were back to smashing skulls with clubs.

Strategic air campaigns tend to have a very dumb appearance with primitive and excessive targeting, rarely any well-devised, logical link between action and objective
and huge expenses with little to show for. Military theory about
strategic air warfare is often outright primitive (Douhet et al) or
little more than a fig leaf for primitive targeting of just about
everything (Warden). Maybe primitive campaigns could be avoided if military theory could get some smart concepts recognized widely.

The whole campaign lets me doubt the ability to learn:

Extremist objectives, a mode of campaigning that will merely reduce the adversary's active repertoire instead of accomplishing the objective, a training and advising component (as if six years of largely fruitless training and advising hadn't proved this futile), in the Middle East and without a definitive end date. The whole bombing campaign sounds like the outcome of a 2007 competition for proposals for the most stupid hypothetical future military campaign.

The bombing campaign appears to be a 100% domestic political thing:

(1) Provides the military and arms industry with (false) justifications in the fight for preserving the almost GWOT hysteria-level budgets

(2) Maintains an external adversary for the population to project hate on and to distract from domestic issues

"This new edition will replace “Doctrine Tactique
” as of publication of the special issue on the Army doctrinal
conference. It aims to provide an insight into how tactical-level
doctrine is approached and applied within the French Army. Each issue
focuses on a specific theme, and includes articles on personal
experiences related to this theme. It is not a regulation doctrinal
document."

"A quaterly liaison tool for the Army doctrinal community launched in early 2004, HÉRACLÈS
disseminates information in the form of short articles and opens its
pages to the thoughts of all of the Army on doctrinal matters – courses
of action, organizations and procedures."

"The Forces Employment Doctrine Centre
(CDEF) has decided to make available to the public part of the French Army’s
official doctrine, with the aim of making this doctrine more well-known.
This is in addition to the publication of the general readership
journals, “Doctrine Tactique” and “Héraclès”.

This doctrine is
shared in order to show how the French Army handles the ever-present
issue of adapting to the reality of commitments and their environment,
in a context of intense strategic transformation where crises have moved
far from the battles between States to the clashes that occur within
societies.

This dissemination comes at a time where major internal
work is being carried out on doctrine. By incorporating the new
parameters of current crises where the French Army is involved, this
doctrinal work should help the Army develop its organization, choice of
equipment and courses of action, combined with the dual demands of power
and control of force.

The dissemination of these documents is
destined for those carrying out research and reflection in the field of
defense, both in the military and civilian environments, at home and
abroad. It is also destined for anyone interested in the current
challenges that arise from defense issues in a large country of the
European Union."

"The Cahiers de la Recherche doctrinale
(The Doctrine Research Journal) are a key contribution to the French
Army research on the present major operational issues. The articles of
this journal are written up by the Military History Research Office of
the Research and Lessons Learnt Department (Forces Employment Doctrine
Center/CDEF). They are drawn up from real events considered from an
historical angle, and they aim at providing unconventional approach and
analysis elements as a supplement to conventional Lessons Learnt
process. Their standards are the ones required by university
publications in human sciences regarding strict methodology codes and
freedom of research, and they are to be considered neither as official
reports nor as staff documents."